The four channel PMT controller board is a PIC microcontroller based device that communicates with a PC by USB as an HID device and with a PIC-based “hand unit” via PIC-to-PIC RS-232 protocol. These two external inputs (USB and RS-232) send strings to the PMT controller that:

Sets the four high voltage levels of the PMTs

Provide four bipolar offset voltages for black level adjustment on an external amplifier system

Control a 2 level programmable gain of a four channel external amplifier system

Control analog mixing of channels of the four channel external amplifier system

Figures 1 and 2 show the current printed circuit board and schematic layouts.

PMT Interface Board

The PMT Interface Board is used to indicate to the controller which type of PMT is connected on each channel. The type of PMT is specified using an analog ID signal. The PMTs that can currently be recognized by the system are:

Figures 3 and 4 show the printed circuit board and schematic layouts for the interface board.

Scan Controller Circuit Board – USB based scancard

Our simplest scan controller is an independent board that communicates with the PC via USB connection. It drives the X-Y scanner galvos and produces the timing signal for data acquisition. Figures 5 and 6 show the printed circuit board and schematic layouts. It has several unique features such as a zero-latency gate